Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes. Lauren Baratz-Logsted
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“Please.” I was back in wheedle mode. “Wouldn’t you like to at least see if you could afford them?”
Before she could answer, I clicked to the part of the catalog where boutique locations were listed. I didn’t think I’d ever persuade her to go to London or Dublin or Milan or Moscow or Kuwait City or Hong Kong, Korea, Bangkok or even São Paulo to shop for shoes, although I suppose Paris might have been nice. Hillary always said she wanted to see Paris. But at least I could try…
“There are two stores right in Manhattan,” I said. “One in the Olympic Tower on Fifth Avenue, the other on Madison. We could each use a day off from work. Come on, just one day. Nobody says we have to buy anything…”
“If I say yes, can I go back to sleep?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
Five minutes later…
“And turn off that computer!”
“Sorry.”
Still, for good measure and so that I’d have something to remind her with should she change her mind, I printed pictures of our three favorites: the Asha, the Ghost and the Parson Flats.
“And stop using my printer!”
“Sorry.”
Then I went to sleep, too.
And all night long, I dreamt of the faceless Yo-Yo Man. I was in his arms, on my feet a pair of Ashas.
I was dancing in my Jimmy Choos.
4
But getting a day off from Squeaky Qlean was not as easy as I thought.
“If you absolutely need to be sick,” Stella said when I called her up with my lie, “then be sick tomorrow. We’ve got four jobs today and I need all squeegees on deck. Tomorrow there’s only one.”
This turned out to be not such a bad thing because, while eating my cold Amy’s Cheese Pizza Pocket in the van after I’d finished the inside of the second job, I was struck by inspiration.
On the bench between the driver’s seat and where I was sitting, feet propped up on the dash, lay Stella’s bible: her scheduling book. In it, were listed the names, addresses and phone numbers of the jobs for each day we worked. She usually left the prices out, perhaps for fear that if we ever actually knew how much she was bringing in, The Girls From Brazil and I—The Golden Squeegee, I might add!—would demand a higher hourly wage.
Quickly, feeling very Nancy Drew, I flipped through Stella’s bible. She always tore off the corner of the page once the day was done, so it was easy work for me to find the page from the day before, on which was listed Elizabeth Hepburn’s name, her address and her no-doubt unlisted phone number.
I found a pen on the seat and grabbed a parking ticket Stella was never going to pay anyway out of the glove compartment, and was just shoving the piece of paper into the pocket of my khakis when Rivera sauntered up.
“Yo, chica,” she said.
From time to time, I wondered if chica was actually a Portuguese word or if they just liked to play with me. A part of me was tempted to sneak onto Hillary’s computer that night and look it up on Babel Fish but then I decided I really did not want to know.
“What’s The Golden Squeegee doing now,” Rivera asked, “looking through Stella’s book to see what time we might get off today? Damn, it’s a hot one.”
“Heh,” I nervously laughed. “That’s exactly what I was doing. Heh.”
Five hours later, home, grimy, exhausted, I picked up the phone, punched in the number on the parking ticket.
It didn’t take more than a brief description, certainly there was no persuading required on my part, and Elizabeth Hepburn was on board.
“Are you sure?” I said. “We’ll be taking the train and no one said we’re actually going to buy anything.”
“Are you kidding?” she laughed. “I’ve been waiting for an offer like this for years—road trip!”
“Tell me again why we’re taking Elizabeth Hepburn to Jimmy Choo’s with us?” Hillary asked the next day just prior to pulling her red Jeep into Elizabeth Hepburn’s circular driveway.
“Because she’s old,” I said, “and we’ll be old one day, if we’re lucky, and we’ll hope to be invited out. Because she’s lonely and she’s fun.”
“Good enough.”
But, apparently, there was something about me that was no longer good enough for Elizabeth Hepburn.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” She tsked as I got out of the car.
It would have been annoying but it had been a long time since anyone had cared enough to tsk-tsk me. My late mother had been a great tsker, but since then…
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“You don’t want to go into the city looking like a…ragamuffin, do you?”
“That’s exactly what I told her!” Hillary said.
“Who are you?” Elizabeth Hepburn demanded.
“Hillary Clinton.”
A slow smile rose on Elizabeth Hepburn’s soft features. “Of course,” she said.
“What’s wrong with the way I look?” I asked again.
But before they could answer, I could see it for myself. Hillary, as always, was dressed impeccably. Riding the rails into the city on a hot summer day, she had on a sleeveless peach sundress with a wide-brimmed straw hat and flat gold sandals that were pretty damn attractive, even if they weren’t Jimmy Choos. As for Ms. Hepburn, she had a slightly more modest aqua sundress on that brought out the color of her eyes, a straw hat with a big floral band à la the late Princess Diana and open-toed spectator pumps that matched her dress. For an octogenarian, she had a great set of wheels.
While I had on…
“All right already!” I said. “I get the point! But isn’t it true these days that so long as you can afford the price tag or pay the restaurant tab, no one cares how casual you look?”
“I care,” Elizabeth Hepburn said, drawing her spine up to its full acceptance-speech glory.
“Well, it’s a little late for me to go home and change,” I said.
Besides, I was thinking, what’s so wrong about jean shorts, a T-shirt and my Nikes? With ten million people or so in the city, there would be plenty of people who looked like me, probably be a lot more people looking like me than like these two garden-party missies. And, hey, my T-shirt was clean.
“I can fix this,” Elizabeth Hepburn said. Then she crooked a finger at me. “Come.”
Five minutes later, I was back on the gravel drive. Gone were my shorts and T, replaced by a fairly pretty peasant blouse and long skirt.
“What we wore back in the sixties,” Elizabeth Hepburn said, “it’s all come back again.”
The amazing thing was, having caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the way out, I didn’t look half-bad. It was a bittersweet pill to swallow, the idea that I looked better in an old lady’s clothes than my own.
“Sorry about the shoes.” Elizabeth Hepburn directed her apology to Hillary as though I wasn’t there. “But mine are all too small for her. I did always have such tiny feet. It was one of the things Rudolf Nureyev used to say he loved about me.”
Rudolf Nureyev? Wasn’t he—?
“That’s okay.” Hillary shrugged as she studied the tips of my Nikes as they peeked out from under the long dress. “We’ll just tell the salesgirls